For decades, Paul Bilzerian held off SEC efforts to collect $62M judgment

To get an idea of just how convoluted control of a single asset could get, here's a bit describing his Florida mansion.

"Mr. Bilzerian's wife, Ms. Steffen, made a deal in 2002, opposed by her husband, to spring him from jail. She agreed to have the partnership sell the mansion and split the proceeds with the receiver, plus turn over some securities and cash.

When the mansion sold in 2004, for $2.55 million, the buyer was another partnership. This one was controlled partly by the mother of a next-door neighbor. Mr. Bilzerian helped put together the deal.

Among the other partners was a corporation controlled by Mr. Bilzerian's wife's parents. Their involvement remained unknown to the SEC for at least two years.

The in-laws were majority partners, holding a 99% interest, at first through the corporation and then through a trust. Mr. Bilzerian's sons were named as trust beneficiaries.

In 2006, amid a dispute between the Bilzerians and the neighbor's mother, a state judge called the couple "at best…trespassers or squatters" and ordered them to leave the property. But they stayed after the partnership went into bankruptcy and the house was sold to a firm that was run by another Bilzerian acquaintance.

That firm made its purchase with financing help from a Bermuda charity, Puma Foundation Ltd., named for a Bilzerian family cat.

Just before the sale closed, a trust controlled by Mr. Bilzerian's mother-in-law acquired a majority interest in the purchasing firm. The firm paid his wife to manage the property. "